Cities News Roundup

More than 220 teachers from greater Boston--nearly four times the
number expected--met on the Lesley College campus in Cambridge, Mass.,
last week to discuss "Educating for Responsibility in a Nuclear
Age."

The meeting--believed by its sponsors to be the first of its kind
held in the nation--was convened to help teachers examine their "role
and responsibility" in making students aware of the dangers and
implications of the nuclear-arms race.

Robert Sperber, superintendent of the Brookline Public Schools,
opened the meeting quoting from a letter written by a seventh grader to
a student in the Soviet Union. "All I ask for is a future," the student
wrote. "I don't want to get in a war with anybody. I want to play
hockey and to make it my life."

"We have the responsibility to teach about nuclear issues, to help
our students make intelligent choices, to help them think about
critical issues, and to give them a useful outlet for their thoughts
and feelings," Mr. Sperber said. "We must deal effectively with this
issue which affects the survival of our civilization. If the subject is
too controversial, then that is all the more reason it should be
included.''

The conference was sponsored jointly by the Lesley College Graduate
School, an anti-nuclear group called Educators for Social
Responsibility, and "Facing History and Ourselves," a curriculum
project of the Brookline Public Schools.

The Cleveland school board, after a
state veto of its buy-out plan, voted late last month to dismiss Peter
P. Carlin as the city's superintendent of schools.

In the hope of avoiding a lawsuit, the board had offered Mr. Carlin
a lesser job at his current salary and full benefits. But Franklin B.
Walter, state superintendent of public instruction, quashed the deal,
saying that the school system, which is $19 million in debt to the
state, could not afford to create a new administrative post at a cost
of more than $100,000 over two years.

The board has been under pressure to replace Mr. Carlin as
superintendent from U.S. District Judge Frank J. Battisti, who is
presiding over the system's desegregation case and has made Mr.
Carlin's removal from office a condition of loosening his authority
over the system.

In a 6-1 vote, the board decided on Feb. 25 not to renew the
superintendent's contract when it expires on July 31. Mr. Carlin is
expected to contest the firing on grounds that the four board members
elected last fall were prejudiced against him and did not give him a
fair evaluation.

Alva T. Bonda, president of the school board, said he was confident
that he could raise enough money privately to keep Mr. Carlin on the
payroll after his contract expires. That option is acceptable to the
state, but Mr. Carlin would not say whether he would accept it.

Marva Collins, the Chicago teacher who said she spurned President
Reagan's offer to head the Education Department, has been the subject
of renewed media attention over accusations that she has misrepresented
herself and her school.

Ms. Collins, a former public-school teacher, first gained national
attention for her reported success inteaching poor children with
learning disabilities at West Side Prep, the private school she
founded. Her rigorous teaching methods and her staunch objections to
federal subsidies heightened public curiosity--and boosted enrollment
at her school, which began in her home with about 40 children and now
has more than 240 students.

Last month, however, a Chicago organization of substitute teachers
accused Ms. Collins of, among other things, accepting Comprehensive
Employment and Training Act funds from 1975 to 1979, contrary to her
insistence that she has never accepted federal aid. The charges were
aired by a Chicago television station and repeated in at least one
national publication. Since then, Ms. Collins and her lawyer have
appeared on local and national television programs to counter the
accusations, which they claim have been "innuendo and misstatement of
fact."

"She has been an excellent teacher and that's all she's ever held
herself out to be," Gerald C. Peterson, Ms. Collins's attorney, said in
an interview last week. "There's been no evidence that her method
doesn't work and her students don't learn."

Mr. Peterson said that the accusations have not affected enrollment
at Ms. Collins' school, and that the parents of her students and the
community have been supportive. "They recognize she has nothing to
defend against," he said.

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